Playing Field
The pitch is of grass and rectangular, stretching 150 metres long and 80–90 metres
wide. There are H-shaped goalposts at each end with a net on the bottom section.
The same pitch is used for hurling;
the GAA, which organises both sports, decided this to facilitate dual usage. Lines
are marked at 13m, 20m and 45m from each end-line.
Teams
Teams consist of fifteen players (a goalkeeper, six backs, two midfielders and six
forwards) plus up to fifteen substitutes, of which five may be used. Each player
is numbered 1-15, starting with the goalkeeper,
who must wear a different coloured jersey.
The ball
The game is played with a round leather ball, similar to a soccer
ball, but heavier. It may be kicked or punched. A punch out of the hand is called
a "handpass".
The following are considered technical fouls ("fouling the ball"):
- Throwing the ball
- Going five steps without releasing, bouncing or soloing the ball. (Soloing involves
kicking the ball into one's own hands)
- Bouncing the ball twice in a row
- Picking/handling the ball off the ground (the goalkeeper may do this in the small
square)
- Handpassing the ball over an opponent's head, then running around him to catch it
- Handpassing a goal (the ball may be punched into the goal from up in the air though)
Scoring
If the ball goes over the crossbar, a point is scored. If the ball goes below
the crossbar, a goal, worth three points, is scored. The goal is guarded
by a goalkeeper. Scores are recorded in the format {goal total} - {point total}.
For example, the 1991 All-Ireland semi-final finished: Meath 0-15 Roscommon 1-11.
Thus Meath won "fifteen points to one-eleven" (1-11 being worth 14 points).
Tackling
The level of tackling allowed is more robust than in soccer, but less than rugby.
The tackling rule has been criticised for being too vague.
Shoulder-charging and slapping the ball out of an opponent's hand is permitted,
but the following are all fouls:
- using both hands to tackle
- pushing an opponent
- deliberately striking an opponent
- pulling an opponent's jersey
- blocking a shot with the foot
- sliding tackles
Restarting play
- The match begins with the referee throwing the ball up between the four midfielders.
- After an attacker has put the ball wide of the goals, the goalkeeper may take a
kickout from the ground at the edge of the small square. All players must
be beyond the 20m line.
- After an attacker has scored, the goalkeeper may take a kickout from the
ground from the 20m line. All players must be beyond the 20m line and outside the
semicircle.
- After a defender has put the ball wide of the goals, an attacker may take a "45"
from the ground on the 45m line in line with where the ball went wide.
- After a player has put the ball over the sideline, the other team may take a
sideline kick at the point where the ball left the pitch. It may be kicked from
the ground or the hands.
- After a player has committed a foul, the other team may take a free kick
at the point where the foul was committed. It may be kicked from the ground or the
hands.
- After a defender has committed a foul inside the large rectangle, the other team
may take a penalty kick from the ground from the centre of the 13m line.
Only the goalkeeper may guard the goals.
- If many players are struggling for the ball and it is not clear who was fouled first,
the referee may choose to throw the ball up between two opposing players.
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The first reference to any code of football
in occurs in the Statute
of Galway of 1527
which allowed the playing of football and archery
but banned "hokie' — the hurling
of a little ball with sticks or staves" as well as other sports. However even "foot-ball"
was banned by the severe Sunday Observance Act of 1695,
which imposed a fine of one shilling
(a substantial amount at the time) for those caught playing sports. It proved difficult,
if not impossible for the authorities to enforce the Act and the earliest recorded
match in Ireland was one between Louth
and Meath, at Slane,
in 1712.
By the early 19th century,
various football games, referred to collectively as caid,
were popular in Kerry , especially
the Dingle Peninsula.
Father W. Ferris described two forms of caid: the "field game" in which the
object was to put the ball through arch-like goals, formed from the boughs of two
trees, and; the epic "cross-country game" which lasted the whole of a Sunday (after
mass) and was
won by taking the ball across a parishboundary.
"Wrestling", "holding" opposing players, and carrying the ball were all allowed.
During the 1860s and 1870s, Rugby
and Association football
started to become popular in Ireland.
Trinity College, Dublin was an early stronghold of Rugby, and
the rules of the English
Football Association were codified in 1863 and distributed
widely. By this time, according to Jack Mahon, even in the Irish countryside, caid
had begun to give way to a "rough-and-tumble game" which even allowed tripping.
Irish forms of football were not formally arranged into an organised playing code
by the Gaelic Athletic Association
(GAA) until 1887. The GAA sought to promote traditional
Irish sports, such as hurling
and to reject "foreign" (particularly English) imports. The first Gaelic football
rules, showing the influence of hurling and a desire to differentiate from
association football — for example in their lack of an offside
rule— were drawn up by Maurice
Davanand published in the United Ireland
magazine on February 7, 1887.
 While it is clear even to casual observers that Gaelic football is similar to Australian rules football,
the exact relationship is unclear, or even controversial. Australian rules was devised
in Melbourne, in the
Colony of Victoria, from 1858.
Because of the Australian goldrushes,
there were many Irishmen in Victoria at the time. The Australian historian B. W.
O'Dwyer points out that both games have always been differentiated from rugby
football by having no limitation on ball or player movement (in
the absence of an offside rule); the need to bounce or toe-kick the ball, known
as a solo in Gaelic football, while running; punching the ball (hand-passing)
rather than throwing it, and other traditions. As O'Dwyer says:
These are all elements of [older] Irish football [games]. There were several variations
of Irish football in existence, normally without the benefit of rulebooks, but the
central tradition in Ireland was in the direction of the relatively new game [i.e.
rugby]...adapted and shaped within the perimeters of the ancient Irish game of hurling... [These rules] later became
embedded in Gaelic football. Their presence in Victorian [i.e. Australian] football
may be accounted for in terms of a formative influence being exerted by men familiar
with and no doubt playing the Irish game. It is not that they were introduced into
the game from that motive [i.e. emulating Irish games]; it was rather a case of
particular needs being met... [B. W. O'Dwyer, March 1989, "The Shaping of
Victorian Rules Football", Victorian Historical Journal, v.60, no.1.]
Other accounts suggest that the relationship may have originated from the opposite
direction: Archbishop Thomas Croke,
one of the founders of the GAA, lived in New Zealand
in the early 1880s and had the opportunity to witness "Australasian
rules" (as it was once known) being played there. Like Australian rules, the Irish
football games of the 1880s allowed players were allowed to grab or push each other.
However the two games were soon developed and diverging, largely in isolation from
each other.
Whatever the truth, since 1967, there have
been many matches between Australian Football and Gaelic football teams, under various
sets of hybrid, compromise rules. In 1984, the first official representative matches
of International Rules football
were played, and these are now played annually each October. However, the precise
connections between the two games are unclear.
Gaelic football has become increasingly popular with women since the 1970s.
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All Gaelic sports are amateur.
The basic unit of each game is organised at the club level, which is usually arranged
on a parish basis,
with various local clubs playing to win the County Championship at various
levels:
- Senior: the better adult clubs
- Junior: weaker adult clubs, from small communities
- Under-21
- Minor: under-18
- Underage: all ages from under-16 down to under-9
On a national level, the team is organised on the old Irish county system
1, producing 34 teams representing
the original 32 counties that cover the island of Ireland, plus teams representing
the Irish diaspora in London and
New York.
There are also clubs in other parts of the USA, Britain, Asia, Australia, continental
Europe and Canada (see ClubGAA link at bottom). Though Ireland was partitioned into
two states in 1920, Gaelic sports (like most cultural organisations and all religions)
continue to be organised on an all-island basis. A team of 15 players plus
substitutes is formed from the best players playing at club level. Nearly all counties
play against each other in a knockout tournament known as the All Ireland Championship.
These modified knockout games are organised on the four Irish provinces of Ulster,
Munster, Leinster and Connacht. In the past, the best team from each would play
one of the others, at a stage known as the All-Ireland semi-finals, with the winning
team from each game playing each other in the
All-Ireland Final. A recent re-organisation now provides a 'back
door' method of qualifying, with knocked out teams getting another chance to win
back into the competition.
County teams also compete in the
National Football League, held every spring. The League is nowhere
near as prestigious as the All-Ireland, but in recent years attendances have grown
and interest, from the public and from players, has grown. This is due in part to
the organisation of the league into the above format, the provision of the Division
2 final stages and the relatively new change of starting the league in February
rather than November. Live matches are shown on the Irish-language TV station TG4,
with highlights shown on RTE2. In 2005, Armagh won the Division 1 title for the
first time in their history, while in a major upset, Monaghan
won the Division 2 title.
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The final game of the inter-county series is the All Ireland Final which
takes place on the fourth Sunday of September in Croke Park.
Before 1999, the final was held on the third Sunday of the month, but this custom
was changed due to an overloaded schedule of matches.
Over the four Sundays of September,
All Ireland Finals in men's football, women's football, hurling and camogie take
place in Croke Park, the
national stadium of the GAA, with the men's deciders regularly attracting crowds
of over 80,000. Guests who attend include
Uachtarán na hÉireann, An Taoiseach
and leading dignitaries.
Two levels of the game are played at each All Ireland, the senior
team and the minor team (consisting of younger players, under the age of
18, who have played their own Minor All-Ireland competition.)
The winning senior county football team receives the Sam Maguire
cup. The most successful county in the history of Gaelic football is Kerry,
with 33 All-Ireland wins, followed by Dublin,
with 22 wins.
In 2005, Tyrone took the
Men's Senior Football Championship, defeating Kerry
in the final, with Down winning
the Minor equivalent. The Senior final was one of the most keenly contested in the
history of the sport, with the game played at a frenetic pace and some sublime points
were scored, most notably from the feet of Kerry's Colm "Gooch" Cooper and Dara
Ó Cinneide and Tyrone's Brian McGuigan and Peter Canavan.
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